The present invention relates to a method for predicting prognosis of acute myeloid leukemia relapse.
Leukemia is a generic term for disorders that leukocytes proliferate into tumors. Types of leukemia are classified as myeloid leukemia and lymphocytic leukemia according to the leukocytes originating leukemia and as acute leukemia and chronic leukemia in accordance with the progress rate. Clinical profiles of leukemia vary depending on the type of diseases and nature of the affected cells. Lymphocytic leukemia is caused when lymphoid blood cells are mutated, myeloid leukemia is caused when myeloid blood cells are mutated, chronic myeloid leukemia is caused when cells in the mature stage are mutated, and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is caused by disorder of myeloblasts starting differentiation in a relatively early state of the hematopoietic process. Acute myeloid leukemia mainly occurs in adults, the elderly, where children patients are about 10 to 15% of the entire leukemia patients. Acute lymphocytic leukemia mainly occurs in children, which is known to have the highest incidence in 2-10 year children. Chronic myeloid leukemia has a high incidence in the old age of 60s or older and chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a rare leukemia in Korea. Acute myeloid leukemia is known to account for about 70% of all the acute leukemia.
The treatment of acute myeloid leukemia includes chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation therapy, and the initial diagnosis usually leads to a complete remission by chemotherapy. If the therapy after the initial diagnosis reaches to the complete remission, no leukemia cell can be found on bone marrow and blood tests, but there are theoretically still at least 100 million leukemic cells in vivo. Thus, the acute myeloid leukemia has also a high risk of recurrence after the complete remission, so that it is important to predict prognosis of relapse about the acute myeloid leukemia after the complete remission.